Donald Trump claims he “never” wanted to end Obamacare – but he did

Donald Trump is angry that Kamala Harris wants voters to take his threats against the Affordable Care Act seriously.

On Thursday, the vice president and the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee introduced themselves during a press conference in Wisconsin that Trump would try to repeal the 2010 health care law on which tens of millions now depend for their insurance. Her Republican rival responded with one after on its Truth Social platform.

“Lyin’ Kamala is now giving a press conference and saying I want to end the Affordable Care Act,” Trump wrote. “I never talked about it, I never even thought about it.”

But less than two months ago, during a presidential debate with Harris, Trump answered a question about the law, also known as Obamacare, by saying it was “bad health care.” … If we come up with something and we work on things, we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it.”

“I have concepts for a plan,” he added during a follow-up conversation. “I am not currently president. But if we come up with something, I would only change it if we come up with something better and cheaper. And there are concepts and options that we have to do that. And you will hear more about it in the not too distant future.”

One reason Trump was asked the debate question was a series of previous posts on Truth Social in which he mused on the fate of the law, going back to one last fall in which he wrote, “The costs of Obamacare are out of control, and besides, it’s not good health care. I am seriously looking at alternatives.”

In that same post, he said Republicans should “never give up” in their efforts to repeal and replace the bill.

A few days later, Trump posted that “I don’t want to end Obamacare, I want to replace it with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare sucks!!!” He too said that if elected, he would try to “produce much better health care for the American people than Obamacare.”

More recently, Trump’s 2024 running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), talked about Republicans who have a “deregulatinghealth care agenda.

And only this week, as first reported by NBC NewsHouse Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told an audience that “health care reform will be a big part of the agenda” if Republicans win power next year.

Johnson then answered a question about the Affordable Care Act by saying, “No Obamacare,” although the meaning of that specific statement was difficult to determine given the context.

The recent rhetoric has clear echoes of what Trump said as a presidential candidate in 2016 and beyond, when he would still do so make promises such as “everyone will be much better taken care of than they are now.”

Trump has never produced a plan consistent with this vow. Instead, the Republican to suggest he supported and tried to get through Congress would have weakened or eliminated the Affordable Care Act’s rules for insurance coverage, while dramatically reducing spending on government-provided or government-funded coverage.

As a result, the number of Americans without insurance would likely have increased.

That prospect turned out to be true very unpopular. It was a major reason why Trump couldn’t convince enough Republican lawmakers to support repeal, and why Republicans suffered heavy losses in the 2018 midterm elections.

The memory of these losses lingers in the minds of many Republican leaders, enough that they may think twice before attempting a full repeal again, even if they emerge from this year’s elections with control of both the White House and Congress.

But Republican leaders have long said the Affordable Care Act is bad policy on its merits, arguing that the mix of regulation, spending and taxes distorts insurance markets and hurts the economy.

Republicans need that too cuts to offset the proposed tax cuts they plan to implement. An obvious source would be the money going to the Affordable Care Act, especially the portion that goes to expansions of Medicaid, the government-funded program for low-income Americans.

And Republicans could always pursue a more piecemeal approach to weakening the law, either by rewriting key regulations or changing parts through legislation.

Of course, even such partial efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act could do just that alarm a majority of Americans. That’s why Harris is trying so hard to make sure voters remember what Trump said, and Trump is trying so hard to make them forget.